Winter Storm Watch Posted for MO & IL-Snow, Sleet, Ice on the Way
It looks like another blast of wintry weather is headed for northeast Missouri and western Illinois.
The National Weather Service has posted Winter Storm Watches for most of the area from midnight to 6 p.m. Thursday, with just about every form of nasty precipitation set to make travel tough.
Officially, the watch for Adams, Brown and Pike counties in Illinois and Knox, Lewis, Shelby, Marion, Monroe and Ralls counties in Missouri calls for heavy mixed precipitation, with total snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches, with locally higher amounts possible. Plus, forecasters say we should expect about a quarter-of-an-inch of sleet and ice accumulations of about a tenth of an inch, with winds gusting as high as 35 miles per hour.
The difference in the Winter Storm Watch for Hancock County, Illinois and Clark County, Missouri is that there's no sleet in that wintry mix, with 4 to 6 inches of snow and up to a tenth of an inch of ice possible, along with the gusty winds.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the weather service says this latest winter blast will start as rain about mid-afternoon Wednesday, changing over to rain and freezing rain about 5 a.m. Thursday, moving to a wintry mix by 7 a.m. and all snow by 9 a.m., with snow showers by mid to late afternoon.
Although Pike and Audrain counties in Missouri had no watches posted by late Tuesday afternoon, they have 1 to 3 inches of sleet and snow and less than a tenth of an inch of ice in their forecast Thursday and Thursday night.
Here we go again.